The background description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
As industrialized nations increasingly shift from industry-based economies to knowledge-based economies, knowledge must be created and transferred across workers faster and more efficiently than ever before. In order to compete, today's knowledge organization increasingly needs its workers to read more, learn faster and more easily share the resulting knowledge with co-workers. Some of the specific processes in need of acceleration include:                Assimilating learned information acquired from reading multiple pieces of content;        Synthesizing the assimilated learned information into higher-levels of knowledge (aggregated knowledge), including findings, conclusions and recommendations;        Presenting the knowledge to others in an efficient, yet verifiable manner        Validating and verifying knowledge for efficient evidence-based decision-making        
Historically, electronic information has been synthesized into reports using tools like Microsoft Word® or Google Docs®, or into slide presentations using tools like Microsoft PowerPoint®. These tools, and the information formats they generate, are limited in that they primarily output information in a one-dimensional form. To the extent supporting content or references that have been reviewed by a knowledge worker are associated into the output, they are by way of cross-references or hyperlinks to other, unrelated systems, and are not incorporated into the information format itself.
For example, reports and presentations may contain references to supporting content or evidence contained within secondary sources, however they do not incorporate those references and secondary sources as additional layers of information within the report or presentation format. As a result, it is very time-consuming, and sometimes not possible, for the reader of the cross-reference to access the cross-referenced information. The reader of the cross-reference has to execute several processes to acquire the cross-referenced information. They have to read footnotes or endnotes, use that information to search for the source documents, acquire the source documents and navigate to the appropriate location within the source documents. Where a cross-reference starts and ends is often not clear from the cross-reference, which does not incorporate a precise way of locating referenced information within a source document.
Reports and presentations may also contain hyperlinks to secondary sources stored on the WWW or an internal file system. While this provides a means of potentially verifying a source, and finding an excerpt within a source, this process has several drawbacks with respect to performing knowledge work:                It is generally a manual process that requires the user to go outside the system where the excerpt is stored to navigate to where the source document or web page is stored;        It relies on a source website remaining at the same Internet address that was captured at the time of excerpt capture;        It relies on the content having remained unchanged since the time the excerpt was captured;        It requires the user to manually scan the content of the source in order to find the specific location of the excerpt within that source;        It requires the application of judgment that the user has in fact accurately matched up the excerpt with the location within the body of the source;        For anyone whom the user seeks to share the excerpt with, they have to go through a similar process.        
This can be quite problematic and frustrating, particularly for knowledge workers who seek to curate their excerpts and related sources as part of their knowledge base. Or, for those who seek to provide a deliverable to others based on referenceable, verifiable excerpts of content as is typical in research, academic and other settings where citation systems are commonly used for this purpose. It is quite frustrating and time-consuming to read-read an entire document every time one wants to verify the source and context of an excerpt. And web pages are dynamic entities. Their content frequently changes, their location frequently changes.
Furthermore, as social technologies increase in use and prevalence, there is a need for communicating this type of information via activity streams or other HTML-based communication mechanisms commonly found in web-based systems.
Accordingly, there is a need for a fundamentally new way for knowledge workers to package their points and conclusions with the underlying content and sources which were reviewed and analyzed in the process of creating them, such that a recipient of the points and conclusions can quickly and efficiently verify them against the underlying content and sources.
These and all other extrinsic materials discussed herein are incorporated by reference in their entirety. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
All publications identified herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
In some embodiments, the numbers expressing quantities of ingredients, properties such as concentration, reaction conditions, and so forth, used to describe and claim certain embodiments of the invention are to be understood as being modified in some instances by the term “about.” Accordingly, in some embodiments, the numerical parameters set forth in the written description and attached claims are approximations that can vary depending upon the desired properties sought to be obtained by a particular embodiment. In some embodiments, the numerical parameters should be construed in light of the number of reported significant digits and by applying ordinary rounding techniques. Notwithstanding that the numerical ranges and parameters setting forth the broad scope of some embodiments of the invention are approximations, the numerical values set forth in the specific examples are reported as precisely as practicable. The numerical values presented in some embodiments of the invention may contain certain errors necessarily resulting from the standard deviation found in their respective testing measurements.
Unless the context dictates the contrary, all ranges set forth herein should be interpreted as being inclusive of their endpoints and open-ended ranges should be interpreted to include only commercially practical values. Similarly, all lists of values should be considered as inclusive of intermediate values unless the context indicates the contrary.
As used in the description herein and throughout the claims that follow, the meaning of “a,” “an,” and “the” includes plural reference unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. Also, as used in the description herein, the meaning of “in” includes “in” and “on” unless the context clearly dictates otherwise.
The recitation of ranges of values herein is merely intended to serve as a shorthand method of referring individually to each separate value falling within the range. Unless otherwise indicated herein, each individual value is incorporated into the specification as if it were individually recited herein. All methods described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g. “such as”) provided with respect to certain embodiments herein is intended merely to better illuminate the invention and does not pose a limitation on the scope of the invention otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element essential to the practice of the invention.
Groupings of alternative elements or embodiments of the invention disclosed herein are not to be construed as limitations. Each group member can be referred to and claimed individually or in any combination with other members of the group or other elements found herein. One or more members of a group can be included in, or deleted from, a group for reasons of convenience and/or patentability. When any such inclusion or deletion occurs, the specification is herein deemed to contain the group as modified thus fulfilling the written description of all Markush groups used in the appended claims.